Music in Cuba

Thursday, 28 April 2016

If those old American cars are one of Cuba’s most iconic images then music has to be the other one.

▲ You can search it out, as we did at the rooftop bar of the Hotel Casa Granda in Santiago de Cuba. Grahame Greene came here in planning to interview Fidel in the 1950s. That meeting may not have happened but the hotel featured in his novel Our Man in Havana. From the roof you can gaze across at the Catedral Nuestra Señora de La Asunción or down at the activity in Parque Céspedes, a popular Wi-Fi hotspot.

▲ Activity in Trinidad seems to circle around the picturesque steps above the Plaza Mayor. Bands play there at night.

▲ You can encounter music as you wander around, I came across this band in a park-like square on my last afternoon Havana. Four singers fronting the stage.